MAYOR’S BEAT | Life at City Hall is a balance of the strategic versus the immediate

One of the biggest challenges in city government is to keep your focus on the most important strategic tasks and projects to be done in maintaining and improving quality services for citizens. At the same time you are listening and being accessible and responsive to emerging needs that are brought forward on a daily basis. The challenge is to pursue the strategic while responding to the immediate and emerging. So we find ourselves building a budget for the coming year and developing an updated city comprehensive plan while responding to concerns over too many rabbits in the community and processing far-reaching public records requests.

October 20, 2015 6:40 pm

By FRED MCCARTHY

One of the biggest challenges in city government is to keep your focus on the most important strategic tasks and projects to be done in maintaining and improving quality services for citizens. At the same time you are listening and being accessible and responsive to emerging needs that are brought forward on a daily basis. The challenge is to pursue the strategic while responding to the immediate and emerging. So we find ourselves building a budget for the coming year and developing an updated city comprehensive plan while responding to concerns over too many rabbits in the community and processing far-reaching public records requests.

We sometimes feel like jugglers with several balls in the air at one time. Usually they can be kept in time and balance until a crisis or immediate need hits like a broken water pipe or wind storm and then all of the balls come down at once and our focus changes from moving the strategic forward to an immediate emerging need. We use a form to stay the course and we update it once a week for supervisors and city council members. The form is divided into four sections:

1. Primary major city issues

2. Mayor’s remaining term priorities

3. Secondary city projects

4. Immediate/emerging needs

As we update the list weekly and check off accomplishments we indicate progress in each area. Of course the emerging needs area grows daily and we do the most critical immediately while keeping track of and not forgetting the lesser priority requests. It is affirming to see how many accomplishments are brought to closure each week by our administrative, support staff, and governance team members working together with dedicated city volunteers. Sometimes I reflect on a statement from one of my heroes and examples from the school administration field, Dr. Harry Wong, who captured the essence of public service: “We are in the business of enhancing lives.”

As I look back on our time together I can identify many of these enhancements. It’s been a privilege to have this great adventure in public service.

Sincerely,

Fred